November 5th 2017

Guest-

Robin Burk- MBA/ PhD

Hurricane, Nuclear Strike, When The Grid Goes Down

I’m Dr. Robin Burk. From my early days writing code in Silicon Valley through my time as an executive, research leader and consultant I’ve been on the cutting edge of change.

My mission is to help business leaders who are worried about uncertain markets, changing regulations, vulnerable supply chains and more. And if you’re a student just choosing a career – or you’re reinventing yourself – I’m here to help you focus a successful, satisfying path forward as well.

I can do this because I’m an MBA, a former entrepreneur and a thought leader in what I call webs of connections between people, systems and organizations. I’ve had bottom line P&L responsibility, managed diverse workforces, taught university level students, consulted to business owners and executives. Today I speak, write, coach and consult to help others succeed.

I’m an expert on cutting-edge mathematics and science about how the complex systems we rely on work – what makes them robust or vulnerable. Whether it’s your local bank or the capital markets, raw materials from overseas or your long-time parts supplier, getting your marketing messages out or just attracting the right employees and fostering productivity, businesses today rely on resource networks that go far beyond the corporate org chart. Making the right connections to the right resources is critical. So is having early awareness of potential threats, emerging competition and new opportunities.

In Check Your Connections I’ve condensed the insights of this new science field into practical, concrete steps you can take to make your business – or your career – thrive despite high uncertainty and rapid change.

I hold an MBA from the Kenan-Flagler Business School (University of Chapel Hill, NC) and a PhD in information science (machine learning, artificial intelligence and data analysis) from SUNY Albany. My undergraduate degree in liberal arts has been a valuable career asset as well.

I’ve worked in Silicon Valley, southern California, the Research Triangle Park, northern Virginia and New York as well as the Midwest. After the attacks of 9/11/2001 I taught at West Point (the U.S. Military Academy) for 7 years, where I helped to set up the Center of Excellence in Network Science before focusing a research program in cognitive, information and network science at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the center of U.S. counter-WMD (weapons of mass destruction) expertise.

* The underlying threat across EMP, cyber, terror attacks on infrastructure and natural disasters is that they can cause an avalanche or cascade of failures across the many complex, interdependent systems we’ve come to rely on every day: power, communications, utilities like sewer, transportation, food distribution, medical care and more.

* Although there are steps we can and should take to harden these systems, network science research shows that there are hidden fragilities in almost any interdependency among highly complex networked systems. So we need to take more regional and local measures.

* The key is to build resilience into our own circumstances and communities so that if the really big systems fracture, it results in a handful of smaller networks rather than in cascades that spread across the US. We do this by establishing some redundancies, starting with our own prep. How to Thrive in an Uncertain World describes a simple 4 step process we can use to make the most cost-effective, appropriate preparations for our own households and businesses.